I had a wisecrack remark about that Jay involving butt hinges and biscuit joiners but I realized I sounded too much like Larry the Cable Guy.

Other than that though, I'd enjoy a wood working thread. I'm no master craftsman so I'll think of it as taking a virtual apprenticeship.

This weekends project involves putting new shocks and a front diff skid plate on my Jeep. Oh wait, none of that involves wood.

Actually, one of my prized possessions used to be a super detailed, hand carved Jeep with painstakingly carved working leaf springs. The detail was incredible and the maker called it a 'toy' and was selling it for only 40 bucks. He must have put months into the thing. Alas, it rolled off of the shelf of our old house during Hurricane Juan and Cosmo, my trusty dog, decided he should be helpful and pick it up for me. He couldn't quiet figure out how to get his teeth around it securely so it was three chomps before he had tight and brought it over to me all proud with his tail wagging. What could I say, except, Good Dog!

I am not sure if this topic is pertinant to this thread - but here goes.......

I posted in another thread my agonies over purchasing from the Factory Outlet or waiting to save enough to go to the Custom Wood Shop. One of the regulars - Zimm, I think - suggested that I go with the Outlet and then do my own wood veneer. Couple of questions:

Axiom's Custom Wood Shop - does anyone know how thick or substantial their veneer is? From all the raves and reviews, I understand it to be of high quality - so the point of the question is could I even come close to replicating myself?

Wood Veneer in general - I am - ok - with wood working. I would not say that I could call it a hobby because I don't do enough of it - but I am ok at it and could call it a pleasant distraction. The thing about me when I do something - like home repair or improvement I generally overkill it and do it better than most that I could hire to do it. So.....having said that, how difficult a job would it be to do the veneer here in the home?

Thirdly, what type of veneer would I be looking for and where would a person typically get that veneer? I think Zimm recommended Paper backed?

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"A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" Churchill

Argon, I think Charles(Zimm) recommended paper backed for ease of installation for the first timer, non paper backed is a different type of installation. There are some tutorials on the 'net about veneer installation/applying usually on some of the veneer suppliers, for eg. this one .

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Half of communication is listening. You can't listen with your mouth.

Honestly, my original purpose in posting here was to see if there were 5 people that might be interested in "getting together" off the forums in a PM thread (limit: 5 people). I know I've enjoyed "off the forum" PM threads, as you don't have to worry about things being "public" or politically-correct. I guess the PMs seem to me like five guys talking at a table, instead of five guys talking in into mics on a stage!

It seems like there's more than five that might be interested, though... so why not try this in the forums? For all I know, it'll die out after a week. Or, it could end up like the wine-lover's thread or the beer-lover's thread... though I assume that one has much wider interest!

Anyway, I'm going to start by introducing my "woodworking self"... hopefully others will chime in with their woodworking alter-ego...

Like many, I became interested in high school Wood Shop classes. I never really was interested in metalworking or any of the other shop classes.

In my senior year, I built this as my first project... (I don't remember for the life of me how I passed the time until I built this):

In hindsight, it was pretty simplistic, but served it's purpose well for a few years in college.

There was a woodworking lull after high school until Joyce and I bought a house in 1990, at which time I bought a Craftsman tablesaw, a Delta bandsaw a Delta drill press and a house-brand 6"x48" belt / 9" disc combination sander. To this point, I've never really attempted furniture, but always built practical, needed things, often for my business.

My old editing and duplication station. Only photo I could find... Ignore the blurry parts on the fringe, it was part of a montage where it was "morphing" into other photos to produce this whole big, morphing promo piece that I created before I knew anything about Photoshop. It had "under counter lighting" above the audio and video mixers (oooohhh....aahhhh), a section designed for rackmount equipment and a separate section to hold globs of VCRs for duplication:

An oak copystand... You mount a still or video camera (facing down) on the column, put flat artwork on the base to photograph it. The pieces on the sides were adjustable and held lights on an angle to avoid reflections:

A little more recently, a mobile workstation in Maple to house my duplicators and a single disc printer (my duplication capabilities have increased, but I still use this station):

The only decorative thing I think I ever built was this oak/glass enclosure for a model car for a friend... really more of a joke-gift than anything else, but decided to do a "this is your craftsman grandfathers' workbench" photo of it as a self-assignment. A little heavy on the soft focus, but I didn't know Photoshop at that point either... or I would now back off on the soft focus :

Anyway, I've never built a table or a chair or anything that qualifies as furniture... mostly practical stuff.

With my decision to not photograph concerts this year, I decided I'm going to spend more time golfing, kayaking, woodworking and taking on projects around the house. So, in the last 6-9 months, I bought a Jet jointer, a Jet 1.5 HP dust collector system (and built a PVC infrastructure for it), a router table and bigger Triton Router, and recently, a Ridgid tablesaw and Ridgid Planer. I've also bought a TON of smaller things here and there... lots of pipe clamps, blades, Router bits, and various contraptions of all types. Next, I'm looking at Dovetail Jigs and like Mike, I want a Mortiser. Last night, I bought an Incra Miter Gauge that's on sale at Amazon (ENDS THIS WEEKEND...HURRY, HURRY!!)

I need to prioritize home-improvement projects over coming "furniture" projects, but I'm revamping and reorganizing my workshop area to prepare for all this. First up is drawers/cabinets for the workshop, then I'm going to rebuild a section of drawers in the kitchen.

Well, mine is nothing to write home about, but this was my first project. It's very simple, but I'm proud because I built it from scratch. A couple of amp stands for my tube amps:

Both of my Grandpa's worked with wood. One was a carpenter and the other liked to whittle. I've always enjoyed admiring woodworking but have never really jumped into it like I've wanted. I hope to get some ideas sparked from this thread!